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the other’s shoulder.
    “Yeah. We really would. But do you mind if I, like, ask, uh…are you someone?”
    Just as he was thinking how pathetic they were, he reminded himself that once he’d had to wait on line like them. That had been years ago, back in the days when King Kong had been the place. But after he’d been let in once, he’d never stood on line again. He’d taken his chance and capitalized on it. And as time had passed and his status had risen, he’d developed the nightly ritual of picking one or two of the hoi polloi for admission to the inner sanctum of whatever club he was gracing with his presence that night.
    “Everyone is someone. I happen to be Marc.”
    “Which is your table?” said Twin One.
    “They’re all my tables.”
    Twin Two’s eyes bulged. “You own this place?”
    He laughed. “No. Of course not. That would be too much trouble.” And besides, he thought, these places stay hot for something like the life span of a housefly. “I just go where the action is. And tonight the action is here. So you two wiggle in there and enjoy yourselves.”
    “All right! ” said Twin One.
    She turned to her sister and they raised their fists and gave each other a gutteral Arsenio Hall salute.
    Marc shuddered as he watched them hurry toward the main floor. They might be just vulgar enough to amuse someone. He opened the door marked PRIVATE and took the narrow stairway up to the gallery. Gunnar, Bruno’s Aryan soul mate, was on duty at the top of the steps. He waved Marc into the sanctum sanctorum of alcoved tables overlooking the dance floor.
    The Manhattan In-Crowd was out in force tonight, with various Left Coast luminaries salted among them. Madonna looked up from her table and waved as she whispered something in a pert brunette’s ear. Marc stuck his tongue out and kept moving. Bobby De Niro and Marty Scorsese nodded, Bianca blew him a kiss, and on and on…
    This was what it was all about. This was what he lived for now, the nightlife that made the drudgery of his daylife bearable. Knowing people, important people, being known, acknowledged, sought out for a brush with that legendary Marc Chevignon wit. It was that wit, that incisive, urbane flippancy that had got him here and changed his nightlife. Soon it would be changing his daylife. Everything was falling into place, beautifully, flawlessly, almost as if he’d planned it this way.
    And he hadn’t.
    All he’d wanted was a little excitement, to watch the watchables, to be where the action was. He’d never even considered the possibility of being in the play, he’d simply hoped for a chance to sit on the sidelines and perhaps catch a hint of breeze from the hem of the action as it swirled by.
    But when lightning struck and he got through the door of the Kong a couple of years ago, things began to happen. He’d sat at the bar and fallen into conversation with a few of the lower-level regulars and the quips had begun to flow. He hadn’t the faintest where they’d come from, they simply popped out. The cracks stretched to diatribes using Buckley-level vocabulary elevated by P. J. O’Rourke–caliber wit, but bitchy. Very bitchy. The bar-hangers lapped it up. The laughter drew attention, and some mid-level regulars joined the crowd. He was invited back to an after-hours party at the Palladium, and the following night when he showed up at King Kong with a few of the regulars, he was passed right through the door.
    A few nights and he was a regular. Soon he was nobbing with the celebs. They all wanted him at their tables. Marc C made things happen. He woke people up, got them talking and laughing. Wherever he sat there was noise and joviality. He could turn just-another-night-at-the-new-now-club into an event. If you wanted to draw the people who mattered to your table, you needed Marc Chevignon.
    And his wit didn’t pass unnoticed by the select few who recognized obscure references and who knew high-level quick-draw quippery when they